In
recent weeks, the city has placed hundreds of vulnerable homeless
shelter residents, frontline hospital workers and recently released
Rikers Island inmates into hotel rooms to help contain the spread of
COVID-19.
And every time one of these temporary guests check in, a company down in Texas pockets a $27 per room, per night fee.
The
firm, Crewfacilities.com LLC, also bills the city $18 for every
breakfast, $19 for every lunch and $34 for every dinner provided to the
guests, according to records obtained by THE CITY.
And
then there’s the actual hotel rooms. The city Office of Emergency
Management blacked out the room rates spelled out in Crewfacilities’
contract, arguing the information was protected from public disclosure
as a “trade secret.”
But
according to an unredacted copy of a related document obtained by THE
CITY, nightly room rates range from $128 for a room in Queens to $163 to
spend the night near Times Square.
A
review of Hotel.com Thursday showed much lower rates available at
struggling hotels all over the city. A Hilton Garden Inn in Tribeca, for
example, was offering a discounted rate of $89 per night, while rooms
at a Best Western in Herald Square were going for $75.
So
far, taxpayers have shelled out about $15.5 million for more than 8,600
rooms booked by Crewfacilities in hotels around town. That includes the
per room, per night fee and the thousands of meals for guests who
request them at the rates set by Crewfacilities’ contract.
In an interview with THE CITY Friday, Councilmember Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), chair of the city contracts committee, questioned Crewfacilities’ $27 per room, per night fee, noting that the industry norm for such a booking fee is typically 10% of the room rate. That would come out to $12 to $16. As of last week, Crewfacilities had charged $2.5 million in these fees.
Kallos
called on OEM to cancel the contract, estimating that between the $27
fee and the $71 per-day meal charge, Crewfacilities could be charging
taxpayers $3,000 per month — above the cost of hotel rooms — for each
guest.
“At
the height of the pandemic we were desperate for hotel rooms and we got
ripped off by a contract with $27 overhead,” he said. “We can and must
do better by cutting out the middleman and going directly to the hotels.
We can use the savings to fund essential services for youth and seniors
this summer.”
As
for the cost of an $18 breakfast, he added, “That better be one fancy
breakfast. If it’s $18 for a bagel and coffee, that’s expensive even for
New York City.”
A few days ago it was revealed a company from Texas got a contract to build a hospital that was never used, now we got another Texas firm profiting from a pandemic.
What is up with these Texas connections? Could this be tied anyway to de Blasio's farcical presidential run last summer when he was traversing the nation for donations to his PAC's?
